Dialogues of the Dead (13.2-13.5)

DIOGENES

But tell me, to whom have you left your great empire?

ALEXANDER

I don’t know, Diogenes; I didn’t give any instructions about it in time; I merely gave my ring to Perdiccas when I died. But why do you laugh, Diogenes?

DIOGENES

I’m only recalling how Greece treated you, flattering you from the moment you succeeded to your kingdom, and choosing you as her champion and leader against the barbarians, and how some even added you to the twelve gods, built you temples, and sacrificed to you, as the son of the serpent.

DIOGENES

But tell me, where did the Macedonians bury you?

ALEXANDER

I’ve been lying in Babylon for a whole thirty days now, but my guardsman Ptolemy promises that, whenever he gets a respite from the present disturbances, he’ll take me away to Egypt and bury me there, so that I may become one of the gods of the Egyptians.

DIOGENES

Well, can I help laughing, Alexander, when I see that even in Hades you still act like a fool and hope you’ll be an Anubis or an Osiris? But don’t be too hopeful about that, personage most divine. It’s against our law that anyone who has once sailed across our lake and passed within our entrance should go up again. For Aeacus does not neglect his duties, nor is Cerberus to be taken lightly.

DIOGENES

But what I should like you to tell me is how you bear the thought of the great happiness you left on the earth above, when you came here—your bodyguards, crack regiments and satraps, all that gold, the nations bowing down before you, and Babylon and Bactra, and those enormous beasts, and the honour and the glory, and your distinction, when you rode forth with a white ribbon on your head, and wearing a purple robe fastened with brooches. Don’t you feel sad that these things are passing beyond your memory? Why do you cry, you fool? Didn’t the wise Aristotle even teach you to realise the insecurity of the gifts of fortune?

ALEXANDER

Wise Aristotle! Why, he’s the arch-knave of all flatterers. Let me be the sole authority on him,

with all his requests for gifts and his instructions, and the way he took advantage of my zeal for education by flattering and praising me, sometimes for my beauty (as though even that were part of the “Good”), or again for my achievements and my wealth. For that was yet another thing he counted as good, so that he need have no shame in accepting some for himself too. The fellow’s an impostor, Diogenes, and a master at the game. But I did at least get one thing from his wisdom—grief for those things you’ve just enumerated, for I think them the greatest of goods.